Jamie
Sigh, what are we going to do with you, Chain Reaction. You have survived 70 actors (without repeats, mind you). You constantly get us into trouble. We’re always like “Gah! How can it be that no one in Furry Vengeance was in a qualifying film based on a book?!” (or something). Ultimately we end up having to pick some movie that no one has ever heard of, that was released in 601 theaters, and has four good reviews out of eleven just to move to the next cycle. Then when we get there we realize that the film we used is actually a tiny nothing film filled with nobodies that did nothing and we are scrambling around again like a couple of scrambling people… … … not saying that that happened here… but how can it be that no one in Angels in the Outfield made a better qualifying film in 2023?!
To recap, an anonymous, mute fool is held in an asylum only to be released as they can’t pay for his treatment. He’s dropped in LA where almost immediately he is recognized as the spitting image of a notoriously difficult method actor currently holding up a big Western. In quite the coincidence he is given some work shooting some scenes in the film at the same time the actor goes a little too method and kills himself. Soon he’s been given the name Latte Pronto and has agents and handlers out the wazoo. He’s thrust in a whirlwind romance with the love interest in the film, into starring in a clearly terrible superhero film, and into some violent situations by his costar. This all comes crashing down immediately and he gets a divorce, loses his representation, and loses all his friends… except… Lenny. Lenny is a super down on his luck PR guy who just needs that one client to make it in the biz. He stands by Latte the whole time even though they are both terrible at their jobs. He tries to get Latte a job, but it turns out to be a porno and Lenny (feeling terrible for being so terrible) has a heart attack. Latte feels for his friends, but through circumstances he is led to believe Lenny has died so he goes out to wander the street. He stumbles into saving the life of a homeless man, getting coerced into politics, and then coerced back out of politics until finally he finds Lenny similarly wandering the street. They reunite and Latte for the first time speaks, showing that Lenny’s friendship is beginning to cure him. They walk away together to take on the world. THE END.
Ho boy, we should not have watched this. This isn’t a patented BMT Existential Crisis (BMTEC), a la Fear, but it got close. If only because there is a complete lack of “Why?” to the film as well as a “How?”… as in ‘how did this end up as a wide release film?’ I just really don’t understand why it appears that Charlie Day cashed in all (and maybe more) of his chips in Hollywood to make this film. I could see if the movie had some message that was really close to his heart, but the message is all muddled. So maybe Day just really likes friendship, maybe that’s the message he really wanted to get across in this… Hollywood satire?… Is it a satire? I can’t tell. Anyway, I’ll end by saying that I actually think some of the acting in this is pretty good. Adrien Brody is fun and I generally don’t like Ken Jeong in anything, but this is the best I’ve seen him act in a film. So that helps bring it up from a total zero.
Hot Take Clam Bake! Day is a time traveler. The act of time traveling addled his brain so what we see in the beginning is him coming from the future. At the end he goes off to take on the world with Lenny. What they end up doing is inventing the time machine. They then concoct a plan to go back in time and make Lenny’s dreams come true. Unfortunately they don’t realize the dangers of creating a TIME LOOP and Day’s mental state is fractured and Lenny is killed as they create a TIME CRISIS. The root of this crisis is the fact that the addled Day is taken from the hospital and the original Day, a method actor and future time machine inventor, sees him. This is impossible to handle and he kills himself. Thus sticking the addled Day in a continuous TIME LOOP CRISIS or TLC. Hot Take Temperature: TLC.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about a first time director given a blank check for no reason and producing what looks like an old-timey Chaplin film with a thousand famous people? Let’s go!
The film is truly wild. It is hard to tell what exactly they were going for. Like, there is a strange mix of both anachronistic stuff (specifically that the big film being produced is a soundstage western, indicating post-war, probably the 50s) and modern stuff (the clear indication that he is tapped for a minor superhero in an MCU equivalent). He is effectively a silent film era actor, but existing in explicitly the modern world complete with takes off of Angelina Jolie etc. It is such a muddled mess that it is no wonder it was at first shelved and ultimately critically panned.
I think the movie would have been far far better served playing it as a joke on old Hollywood, with Day being a quintessential silent film star.
I also was quite confused because the doctor at the beginning basically said he could be led around like a dog, and then for the rest of the film everyone struggles to get him to do anything. It would have worked better if it was specifically more directly about that: a joke on how the Hollywood Machine consumes young actors, makes them into stars by manipulating them, declares them geniuses, and then spits them out. That message is kind of there, but everyone knows Pronto is terrible at acting and is quite frustrated by it. It would have been funnier if they were like “move there and say this” and then when he did they were like “brilliant!” and then the ultimate joke is while they are all smelling their own farts and loving his acting (i.e. their acting) audiences hate him and they can’t figure out why. You see … basically poking fun at the Hollywood Machine and the finicky nature of trying to understand the audience’s whims and wants.
And ultimately you would think a part of the film would be the cycle of consuming actors, chewing them up, and spitting them out via a final scene in which Day returns to the mental institution and they reveal that he’s actually come and gone a few times now, and they don’t know where he goes, and thus Latte Pronto is just one iteration of the world taking in and manipulating him.
It alllllllmost sounds like I’m defending the film, but if you squint you’ll notice I’m actually describing a different, maybe better, film. Fool’s Paradise is a mess and while the actors are game the whole thing never really coalesces around a message and so you end up wondering why you are wasting time on this film in the first place.
Also the film is 100 minutes when it could have and should have been 85 with credits merely by cutting out all of the bad bits involving Charlie Day’s friends, but I can see why he would be resistant to that. It is crazy though, it is a veritable who’s who of actors who are frequent guest stars on It’s Always Sunny passing through each scene.
Obviously a Setting as a Character (Where?) for Hollywood which the film is gently making fun of throughout. And I think the film is closest to Bad as it is just so long and not funny and weird as to be unpleasant.
Uh … I guess I’ll make a sequel to Fool’s Paradise? That’s in the Quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 